COVER STORY: Food

Chef Michael Smith surveys the ingredients for two pasta dishes from his book Back to Basics. Once the water boils, all there is to do is cook the noodles and toss.Dave Sidaway
/ The Gazette

Michael Smith consults his cookbook Back to Basics as he prepares two pasta dishes: a tomato basil carbonara and a fettucine dish with asparagus, peas and pine nuts.Dave Sidaway
/ The Gazette

Michael Smith prepared two pasta dishes quickly and with ease: a fettuccine featuring asparagus, green peas and pine nuts, and a carbonara studded with cherry tomatoes and whole basil leaves — a riff on a dish usually prepared with eggs, cheese and bacon.Dave Sidaway
/ The Gazette

Even when you’re dealing with simple recipes, Michael Smith says, it’s important to take a few minutes to get organized. “Spend time to save time: It’s a good strategy for life in general.”Dave Sidaway
/ The Gazette

MONTREAL - The recipe calls for pine nuts — but maybe you’re out of pine nuts. Besides, pine nuts are expensive. So why not use almond slivers?

Recipes are just a starting point, says celebrity chef Michael Smith. They’re not carved in stone — and they needn’t be adhered to slavishly.

“Once you understand the basics behind a recipe, you can then stir your personality into your cooking,” the engaging Prince Edward Island-based television pesonality observes in the introduction to his latest cookbook, Back to Basics: 100 Simple Classic Recipes with a Twist (Penguin). “Once you know the basic rules, you can break them.”

Smith, the host of several shows seen on Food Network Canada and in dozens of other countries, was in Montreal last week as part of a tour to promote the book, his seventh.

What he is trying to do, through his shows and books, is to give people an understanding of food and cooking so they’re better poised to make their own decisions, he said. The word “twist” in this accessible new book, beautifully illustrated with colour photos by Ryan Szulc, is for the readers to add — once they have learned their way around the basics. Fun.

It’s about teaching us to teach ourselves, said the personable Smith, 46 — about inspiring and empowering us.

As he spoke to The Gazette on Wednesday morning, he was setting out the ingredients for two pasta dishes in Back to Basics. He would prepare both in the time it would take for the water for the fettuccine to boil — an indication of their simplicity and the speed with which they could be cooked and served.

Simplicity notwithstanding, it’s important to take a few minutes to get organized, he said as he consulted the recipes. “Spend time to save time: It’s a good strategy for life in general.”

We were in the spacious kitchen area at the back of the Westmount cookbook store Appetite for Books, where Smith would meet later in the day with a capacity crowd of about 60 — people who had ordered copies of the book and wanted to hear the celebrity chef speak. Owner Jonathan Cheung had kindly offered us the space so that the chef could demonstrate.

One of the two pasta dishes featured asparagus, green peas and pine nuts; the other was a carbonara studded with cherry tomatoes and whole basil leaves — a riff on a dish usually prepared with eggs, cheese and bacon. In this recipe, the bacon is omitted.

As he chopped and stirred, Smith, a natural teacher, explained what he was doing. The language of the recipes is his — bright and easy to follow. The asparagus pasta recipe called for a quarter cup of butter. “The recipe doesn’t call for it, but I see no reason not to brown the butter,” he said. For one, it adds flavour, he explained. And it’s an example of what the cookbook and shows are about, he added: learning how recipes work and then making them your own.

And although the instructions with the carbonara recipe say for the leaves and tender stems from two bunches of basil to be thinly sliced, “there is no reason to cut them,” he said. “It saves time to use the leaves whole.”

If Smith speaks of cooking in exalted tones — simply sizzling garlic briefly in oil “elevates it,” he observed, and the basic method of whisking together eggs and cheese to create the creamy sauce of a carbonara “is a revelation” — it’s because he thinks cooking is hugely important.

“It is my lifelong mission to inspire people to connect with people through food,” he said. “The idea that we are too busy to cook or can’t cook is ridiculous.

“Fewer of us than ever before are actually cooking,” he said. “In just two short generations, we have lost our food ways.” Teaching people about food, then, is “my passion.”

Some are simply intimidated by the prospect of putting together a meal, he said, believing that if they can’t do it perfectly, they won’t do it at all. “But that idea of perfection is ridiculous. We shouldn’t be chasing it,” he said. “I can’t do perfect. ... Relax. It’s just cooking.”

And cooking for one’s family is doing something positive and important for the family, he said. “I want you to see the value of passing food values on to the next generation.”

He said he intends for each recipe in Back to Basics to be a mini-cooking lesson.

Why, for instance, is there mustard in the house vinaigrette? Mustard, as he explained and as the recipe explained, is an emulsifier: it helps oil and vinegar to combine.

People sometimes approach Smith to tell him that they loved a particular recipe or, more fundamentally, to say “You changed my life.”

To him, that’s a validation of what he’s trying to do.

“If I can entertain you, I can engage you,” he said. “What I would like is to inspire you.”

Smith credits his mother, who welcomed him and his two brothers into the kitchen when they were small, for having taught him that “the kitchen can be a friendly, relaxed place where at any moment magic can appear.”

Working in restaurants was satisfying — ”I love putting a smile on people’s faces,” said the Culinary Institute of America graduate — “but, at the same time, what I was doing was engaging in commercial transactions with anonymous strangers.”

The birth of his first child changed his perspective on food, Smith said. It made him realize “that I needed to get engaged, to be a chef at home.”

Although his work as a professional chef has taken him all over the world, today “my life is about my family, my community,” he told his Appetite for Books audience.

With three kids, Gabe, 11, Ariella, 5, and Camille, 14 months, it’s a busy home for Smith and his wife, singer-songwriter Chastity Fizzard. He leaves work by 3 — his commute from his test kitchen is about 100 feet — and spends an hour doing yoga, he said. By 4, he is in the kitchen, dinner is ready for 5 and the girls’ bath time is at 6.

“I cook every day,” he said. “I go to the supermarket. Everybody is checking out my cart. I take the food home and do the dishes: nobody can load a dishwasher like me. I get it.”

Knowing that his book tour would keep him away from home for a week, for instance, he prepared several meals in advance, including a chicken roasted with sweet potato and apple, the fixings for beef and lentil tacos, and ribs in the freezer ready for the slow cooker.

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